Digitech Jamman Looper Pedal - Product Review

A few months ago, I purchased the Digitech Jamman Looper. I do a one man singer-songwriter thing. I'm always looking for things to fill up my sound. The idea of being able to loop a beat, a vocal or a chord progression always appealed to me. The following is my review of the Digitech Jamman Looper pedal.

The Digitech Jamman Looper pedal has the following features. They are a follows:

You can save up to 99 independent loops at one time.

You can store over 3 hours of looping time on the included 1GB Compact Flash card.

Feel free to upgrade to a 2GB card to store up to 6.5 hours of audio loops.

You can connect the Jamman to your computer via USB and save your loops. Never lose another loop ever again.

You can record rhythm loops and solo over them on the fly, completely Hands-Free.

You can load up the Jamman with bass lines, drums, harmonies, and whatever and create an entire backup band.

You can slow down or speed up any song without changing pitch to master that tricky riff.

The power supply is included.

I opened the box containing my Digitech Jamman Looper pedal. At a street price of $249.00 USD, I couldn't resist. I plugged my guitar into the instrument input on the back of the unit and ran another guitar cord from the output jack on the unit to my PA mixer. Now there is a bit of a learning curve to the Jamman so don't expect to be using it right out of the box. Read the included manual cover to cover and check out some demos of the unit online. I had a bit of trouble getting my loops in time at first but after watching some demos online, I was able to master it. I use the "auto record" mode. This makes it so I hit the record button but recording does not start until the unit hears a sound from the input (until I start playing or making a beat or whatever). There is a click track metronome in the Jamman that can help you with timing issues. You can change the tempo of your recorded loop by pressing the "tempo" button on the unit. There are Mic level, Instrument level, Loop level, and rhythm level knobs on the unit. The Mic, Instrument and loop level knobs are self explanatory. The rhythm level knob adjust the level of the click track metronome. A large selector knob takes you through all your stored loops. On the back of the unit, you'll see an XLR input, an Instrument input, an aux input for a CD player or an mp3 player or iPod, a foot-switch jack, the place where the compact flash card goes in, and your power input jack. If you store loops and recall them later, it's a good idea to get the optional FS3X foot controller that will allow you to scroll through your loops to find the desired one you have stored without bending down to turn the selector knob.

The Pros:

Compact flash storage. This is great, I can store all my loops and come back to them later. If I run out of room on my compact flash card, I can transfer them to my PC and save them that way. I can construct a loop on my PC, make it into a .wav file and transfer it to my Jamman via the USB port. The possibilities are endless.

An XLR microphone input. With other units, you need a mixer to split the signal. But with the Jamman, you can plug in both your instrument in AND a microphone into the unit.

The Cons:

If you have a vocal microphone plugged into the Jamman plus an instrument, both of those sources will be going out of only one output and going into only one input on your mixer or amp. I don't like this because the mix on my vocal is very different than the mix on my instrument. As a result, the only thing I use the XLR mic input for is if I'm at home storing some loops to use later in a show.

For $249, the Digitech Jamman Looper is a great tool. It's not perfect but close to it in my opinion. Hopefully, in the next year or so, Digitech will come out with an upgraded Jamman that has separate outputs for the XLR microphone input and ¼ inch instrument input.